The forest felt pensive as I entered Hood Mountain Regional Park from the Los Alamos Road entrance on the last Monday morning in September. Temperatures above 100 degrees were forecast, so my plan was to take a short walk down to Wildcat Creek where the dog could cool off, then head home by noon. At 10 am the heat was already flowing up the trail over my bare arms and into the treetops.
Last time I was here it was spring with wildflowers galore and green everything spreading under oak trunks still blackened from the last wildfire. Now the landscape was crisp with crinkling buckeye leaves drooping in hazel hues and thatches of poison oak sunsetting into mauve and maroon. The hot, dry scene was unsettling yet compelling enough to continue.
When I first slipped, it was on the steep dusty fire road. I was surprised as I rarely lose my balance. Usually I can read the trail and avoid loose terrain. No harm done, but I took notice. Descending to the creek, the air cooled and lightened as the warming canopy offered shade. I was glad to reach the water and watch my panting black buddy dip in.
The remnants of a creek trail were visible on the other side, so I ventured across. Quickly the faint path was ambushed by nasty blackberry thickets and tough stickery foliage that stopped me in my tracks. Thinking I might walk down the creek, I backtracked and turned into the riparian corridor with its trickling stream and dark river rocks. Immediately, I slipped again and fell right down. No harm done, but this time I got the message: stop messing around and get back on the main trail.
Climbing back up above the creek, every bit of shade was a patch of relief from the intensifying quilt of heat. White and yellow tarweed in bloom tinged the air with a musky-lemony scent. Blackberries baking in the sun added hints of warm muffins. Here and there a poppy sparkled gold and orange on the edges of rolling grasslands turned the color of hayfields. A flowering of red California fuchsias lit up a rocky slope like embers about to ignite.
Still determined to keep walking, I headed toward the confluence of Wildcat and Santa Rosa Creek’s South Fork at Homestead Meadow where the boundaries of Hood Regional Park and Sugarloaf State Park converge. From here you can walk for miles to the top of Hood Mountain or Gunsight Rock. Thanks to new public land additions, someday we’ll be able to go even farther into the Mayacamas.
But on a hot day like today, the creek crossing was my destination, just over a mile from the parking lot. Raucous blue scrub jays quarreled in the bushes while acorn woodpecker families with red and yellow faces laughed and heckled the universe from high on limbs and snags. A handsome kingfisher, belted in blue and red patrolling the creek, landed nearby to keep watch. When a tiny yellow Wilson’s Warbler with his smart black cap appeared on a bush, I was sitting down peeling my 11 o’clock hardboiled egg. In my haste to fetch my binoculars, I accidentally stuck my hand in a stinging nettle. Ouch. It throbbed all the way back to the car, where it was 91 degrees and high noon.
What a wild Valley!